1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for separating the fillets of a flatfish from its skeleton in the region of its belly cavity and along its main backbone including a pair of circular belly filleting knives rotating about a fixed axis situated on one side of a path for the main backbone and pair of circular back filleting knives situated on the other side of said path, rotating about an axis supported by a first arm swiveling about a fixed axis, and held in their operating position by means of a pressure spring and a first adjustable stop, a pair of backside conveyor disks on one side of said path and pair of belly side conveyor disks on the other side of said path, two pairs of backbone guides, one pair situated on the belly side of said path beneath the outer surface of the belly filleting knives, and the other pair on the other side of said path beneath the outer surfaces of the back filleting knives, and a separating tool crossing said path at an angle differing from 90.degree. near the line connecting the centers of the backside conveyor disks and the bellyside conveyor disks, this separating tool including two rib scraping tools each of these having a scraping edge.
2. Description of Prior Art
GDR Patent Specification No. 97,124 discloses an apparatus comprising a pair of circular dorsal knives and a pair of circular abdominal knives, spring loaded guide wings arranged as synchronously coupled pairs in front of the abdominal and dorsal knives and a pair of conveyors arranged in a plane normal to and between said abdominal and dorsal knives, in which the abdominal knives together with the pairs of guide wings are arranged stationarily, where as the dorsal knives are arranged to give way against the force of spring means in such a manner that in the position of rest the space between the cutting edges of the abdominal and the dorsal knives amounts to a few millimeters and that a window is provided between the innermost guide wings of the abdominal knives as well as between the innermost guide wings of the dorsal knives. From each side a conveyor projects into these windows. Both conveyors are driven synchronously and allowed to give way resiliently, while a pair of bone guides is arranged in direction of said windows, each of said bone guides covering the cutting edges of the abdominal knives. Adjacent to each of said dorsal knives a pair of peeling tools is arranged. However, in such apparatus it is impossible to achieve positive transport during the action of the peeling tools.